The Laramie Project

For those of you that aren’t aware, the drama group at South known as the Pointe Players are performing “The Laramie Project” on November 21-22-23. This play was conceived from hundreds of interviews that chronicled a town’s reaction to a killing that occurred just over 10 years ago. The background is that Matt Shepard was gay, a college student, and was brutally murdered by two men.

This is taken from Time magazine…A month after the murder of Matthew Shepard, the frenzied media coverage was beginning to subside. But just then the beleaguered town of Laramie got another influx of visitors. They were actors from NYC who had cast themselves as reporters. The actors talked to more than 200 people and amassed over 400 hours of interviews over the next year and a half. Verbatim excerpts from those interviews make up the text for the play, an unusual mix of drama and documentary.

The Westboro Baptist Church out of Topeka, KS sent a fax to the The Detroit News on Monday stating that they were planning to protest the play here at South on 11/21. This is the same group that protests at funerals of slain US soldiers from the war in Iraq. Their theory is that these military deaths are the punishment for a country that supports homosexuality. They were in Grosse Pointe to protest a military funeral at the War Memorial less than a year ago. They also stated they would protest the play unless a military funeral elsewhere supersedes the need to protest here.

Since Monday, I have also been contacted by The Free Press, WJR, and 97.1 concerning the project. They wanted to know if we were going to cancel the play because of the potential protest. After telling them we would continue with our plans, I see two potential outcomes:
1) There is no formal protest and our talented kids perform in front of a larger than anticipated audience because of all the free publicity.

2) There is a formal protest and we use that opportunity as a “teachable moment” to discuss with students the feelings associated with strong beliefs that reflect our individual moral compasses.

In either case, our kids benefit from performing the play.

I wanted to let you know so that you were prepared for potential questions. I have to tell you that phone calls and email messages that I have received have been 99.9% in support of our position.

Thanks for reading.